Arch manual pages

This manual page documents the GNU version of rm. rm removes each
specified file. By default, it does not remove directories.

If the -I or --interactive=once option is given, and
there are more than three files or the -r, -R, or
--recursive are given, then rm prompts the user for whether to
proceed with the entire operation. If the response is not affirmative, the
entire command is aborted.

Otherwise, if a file is unwritable, standard input is a terminal,
and the -f or --force option is not given, or the -i or
--interactive=always option is given, rm prompts the user for
whether to remove the file. If the response is not affirmative, the file is
skipped.

prompt once before removing more than three files, or when removing
recursively; less intrusive than -i, while still giving protection
against most mistakes

--interactive[=WHEN]

prompt according to WHEN: never, once (-I), or always (-i);
without WHEN, prompt always

--one-file-system

when removing a hierarchy recursively, skip any directory that is on a
file system different from that of the corresponding command line
argument

--no-preserve-root

do not treat '/' specially

--preserve-root[=all]

do not remove '/' (default); with 'all', reject any command line argument
on a separate device from its parent

-r, -R, --recursive

remove directories and their contents recursively

-d, --dir

remove empty directories

-v, --verbose

explain what is being done

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

By default, rm does not remove directories. Use the
--recursive (-r or -R) option to remove each listed
directory, too, along with all of its contents.

To remove a file whose name starts with a '-', for example '-foo',
use one of these commands:

rm ---foo

rm ./-foo

Note that if you use rm to remove a file, it might be possible to
recover some of its contents, given sufficient expertise and/or time. For
greater assurance that the contents are truly unrecoverable, consider using
shred.